


Exit Wounds

by Kypros



Series: Ex Vivo [2]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-15
Updated: 2015-08-15
Packaged: 2018-04-14 20:29:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4578924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kypros/pseuds/Kypros
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, love isn't enough.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Exit Wounds

His shadows are quiet. His life is quiet. He doesn't see that useless bastard Kakashi anymore— _wait._

Now is not the time for that.

Tenzou fingers fumbled, frantic as he searched under the sink for provisions. After a moment, they emerged with a half empty bottle of rubbing alcohol, a box of bandages (useless, he thinks) and the tail end of a roll of medical gauze. He thinks very little as he kicks off his shoes and peels his clothing from his skin down to his undergarments. A quick look in the mirror allows him to rationalize that it wasn’t all that bad. Everything was going to be just _fine_. He was okay. Really, he was.

He works in motions now, going from point A to point B—the cap to the bottle comes off and the nearest wash cloth is grabbed. Liquid soaked and spills into the cotton; his hands, the floor, and he hisses as the burn eats away at his stomach before he starts the process of wrapping his abdomen with the flimsy gauze. The motions continue. He starts a warm bath and watches as the water runs, filling the basin to the brim.

As he steps in, his right leg spasms; it gives out in a shrug-twitch that he doesn't see coming, and his left foot has nothing under it. Before he can think, he nearly falls. There is a moment of panic and gravity, then pain, and now a jerky hand movement as he clings to the wall. When after a moment there is still no burst of specific agony hailing from his injury, he stiffly turns his face to the side and opens his eyes to finds himself in the mirror across the room. He notices that his hair is wet and a hand slowly reaches up to feel it. It comes down brown and red and dirty. At least, he thinks, the bath will get it clean.

He isn't too surprised that this has happened. Tenzou had begun to suspect be that his body was betraying him and when he can no longer feel the quick push-shove of adrenaline pumping through his veins, he tries again.

There is a knot in his throat. He ignores it like he has been for the past twelve minutes (and  _twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three_  seconds), focusing instead on the contradictory sensation of having physically turned from solid mass to a liquid and managing somehow to still thrum with tension in every boiling sinew of his body, his muscles curling unstoppably, rigidly, and unhesitatingly.

The knot in his throat however, is tightening, become hard and hot and thick and foreign. He inhales past it, almost desperate now because whatever this is, it isn't something he is familiar with and that is all he needs to know. He doesn't want this. He doesn't want fear and mistakes and— _oh._ Kakashi. That's right. He doesn't want to be desperately vying for a man who up and left without so much as saying goodbye. It’s been three months and 26 days now and he hasn’t even so much as seen the man. He screws his eyes closed and he slips down, down, down and into the water. There is a sound like a gasp, like a choke (like a sob - but not quite).

Tenzou jerks down into the tub and with weak, fumbling fingers turns off the tap and breathes.

Here is how he does it: he breathes steadily, deeply, and shudderingly, in with his mouth and out with his nose (subconsciously refusing to breathe in through his nose—he cannot stand to smell of the blood and the rubbing alcohol he spilled on the floor), his body trembling and revolting against him. All he does is breathe and listen to the drip, drip, drip of the tap. He is aware that something is wrong, something is happening, and something in his plan went awry. He is not okay. Suddenly, it is becoming very hard to concentrate and every ounce of his awareness is going into staying awake. Coming here was a terrible idea. He should have gone to the infirmary. But he hates hospitals and he never needed to go before because  _Kakashi would_ —

He chokes on his own thoughts and looks down. Blood is blooming from his side, seeping through the bandaging and turning the water a lovely shade of pink.  _How nice_ , he thinks.  _How—_

Then, thought is gone and sensation is gone and his head is gone and his strength is gone and his sensibility is gone and Tenzou is gone.

Tenzou is not here right now. Please, try again later. His body slips down deeper into the tub and in the distance, birds chirp their swan song in the evening dusk.

 

* * *

 

 

He is pulled from the water in one swift and violent motion, a rigid set of hands digging deeply into the curves of his shoulders as he is hauled forcibly over the precipice of the porcelain edge of the tub. He is half-awake, half-aware of what is happening, but barely able to make out the blurry outline of a man whose voice is low and angry, muttering strained intonations of “you fucking idiot—” and “Tenzou,  _wake up_!”

Tenzou does not respond, merely chokes up water and violently begins to cough. His head hurts more than ever, but the pain in his abdomen is surprisingly subdued, barely a dull throbbing ache, silent in its repetitive vigor. His hands however, feel numb and as he blinks, listless eyes are strained to see anything in the softened darkness beyond the man who is dragging his slick body across the tiles and pressing him into a sitting position against the cool, slightly damp bathroom wall. He breathes in deeply, only to choke again, and this time the cough is increasingly wet. His tongue can taste the metallic tang of blood slipping past his teeth, coating his mouth in a glossy stickiness as it dribbles down his chin.

There is more swearing—intemperate words that are hastened by quick fingers that impatiently fumble with the saturated bandaging above his hip bone before pressing the thick of a scratchy bath towel against the wound.

“Tenzou, listen to me—,”

Consciousness is slowly overtaking him and he can recognize the voice now—it’s quieter, more restrained—but it’s the voice of a ghost and he had almost forgotten how it had sounded.

“Tenzou—,”

Tenzou’s eyes slip shut again and he can feel the breathy sigh of Kakashi brushing softly against his cheek.

“Why didn’t you go to the infirmary, Tenzou?” Fingers trace the angular line of his jaw, grazing the rough line of where a kunai blade had grazed his chin. He can feel a cool thumb wipe away the traces of drying blood. “Itachi told me you never showed up for your mission debriefing and—,” Tenzou exhales. He can recognize the lull of panic in the other man’s voice, a quiet and strangled consternation that is near undetectable—but it is there, seeping unknowingly into his words and cocooning him in an aura of reserved distress. In a way, it is relieving to hear it—to know that he  _still cares_ —but Tenzou is barely understanding of himself right now and suddenly, he is awash with an awakening anger that he wasn’t sure he was capable of. It is an anger that courses through his veins, forgoing and sharp, before he manages the strength to shove the other man away from him in a startling display of tenacity.

“You—,” He coughs up more water and blood, struggling to slip words past a muddled tongue. “You had him  _watching_  me?” His voice is unrecognizable to his own senses, a loud and indignant cry that comes from the sudden realization that this entire time Kakashi had been surveying him from afar. Observing his every move. Checking in on him by means of a quiet and distasteful voyeurism. Not once actually coming to see him for himself.

Kakashi shakes his head and edges closer, closing the distance between them once again and bringing his hands back to his side, fingers pressing gently against the damp towel and applying pressure to the oozing wound.

“That doesn’t matter Tenzou—you should have gone to the infirmary—you… _you_ should have—,”

“Like _fuck_  it matters!” He is thrumming with exasperation, every ounce of anger all-consuming and pushing past the dull throbbing that is coursing through his battered body. He is alive, but he is far from okay—he is frantically  _not_  okay and this in part, is Kakashi’s fault.

“You left—,” He struggles to push Kakashi away from him a second time, but the unforeseen strength he once possessed has all but left him, and his body is once again rebelling against him. “And then you had Itachi watch me for you?” Tenzou scoffs, but his lungs dissipate the notion into a pitiful cough that brings forth a fresh slew of blood, tinging his teeth a horrific shade of pink.

“Tenzou, it wasn’t like that,” Kakashi tries earnestly. There is desperation in his voice, suffused by measurable guilt and shame, but Tenzou isn’t buying it. “I couldn’t stay anymore—I couldn’t watch you—,”

His voice breaks off and Kakashi leans back, sliding to the floor in a pitiful display of frustration and defeat.

“Couldn’t watch me  _what_?” Tenzou snaps backs.

A silence falls between them, impermeable and thick, ebbing at Tenzou’s wavering temper and coming close to suffocating him. He is breathing heavily, in and out, through and through, and between the two of them something has broken that cannot be fixed.

“—Do this,” Kakashi concludes quietly, eyes falling steadily to the slick floors of the bathroom, tempered by water and traces of astringent rubbing alcohol.

Confusion was something Tenzou was all too familiar with—he had been confused when he woke up three months ago and Kakashi was no longer their team captain. He had been confused when there was note, no goodbye, no  _anything_ from the man he had once called a lover. He had been confused for three months and twenty-six whole days in the aftermath, going through the motions of guilt, depression and denial and he was confused now.

“I don’t understand,” Tenzou says. “I don’t…”

“—you wouldn’t,” Kakashi replies, cutting him off. “I knew you wouldn’t.”

“Then explain.  _Now_ ,” Tenzou demands.

There is the quiet sounds of Kakashi slipping off his mask, fabric slipping around the curve of neck. His breathing is heavy and undulating. His voice, what is left of it, is blank, tight, raking and uneven, and his words trip out of his mouth after each other too quickly as he replies, “I could say that I hate you but I don’t. It’s your fault, Tenzou. I don’t hate you, I love you, so don’t ask this of me—,”

“ _My fault?_ —,”

It is a sharp explosion. “You don’t  _get it,_ do you?! You’ll  _die_ , just like everyone else. You’ll _leave_  me. So don’t ask this of me, Tenzou. Don’t ask me to go through it again.”

There is a knot in Tenzou’s throat that feels like devastation, and unspoken words float in the wake of his sudden realization as he swallows back anger. Kakashi has not yet looked at him once, eyes steadily glued to the floor, and Tenzou now knows—yes he  _knows_ —why Kakashi left. Tenzou shakes his head—he can feel the room spinning—everything is spinning, and now his lungs feel like they are stiffening into cardboard. His mouth is dry and his throat tight with the words that he remembers Kakashi first swallowing in a drunken haze a few months back— _I love you_ —and how it was all so meaningless. But in this moment, the memories do not matter as all Tenzou can concentrate on his is breathing. He can only take in short breaths with his new cardboard lungs and his exhalations are quick and harsh. He is practically panting, and he realizes distantly that tears are falling freely (and he doesn’t know when they started), but he cannot do anything about this senselessness because now the most incredible, almost familiar heat has found its way into his chest, and his fingers are tingling and his teeth are clenched, air whistling through them like a song that isn’t as driving as the pulse he can feel in his ears—

Kakashi moves from his spot on the floor and pulls Tenzou into a too harsh embrace, as if he had forgotten Tenzou was not already falling apart at the very seams. In the distance, birds chips in the morning sunrise and beyond the bathroom window there is the sound of children laughing, a dog barking and a bell of a bicycle carried by the wind. Tenzou nearly vomits.

The part of his brain that is still functioning recognizes this as panic.

“I’m sorry—,” Tenzou hears this only distantly, his head filled with a mute buzzing that is uncontrollable in its ability to deafen him. “Tenzou, _I’m_   _sorry_ —,”

Tenzou swallows back blood and does not hear, does not want to hear, and closes his eyes. There is no need for him to open them again to see the end. He knows it intimately, just like he knows all of Kakashi’s little ironies and tragedies and secrets.

Kakashi takes Tenzou to the hospital and when Tenzou finally opens his eyes again, Kakashi is gone.


End file.
